Facebook Messenger To Help You Chat With Strangers [REPORT]

Facebook will now help you get familiar with a few of the details of a stranger who messages you. The social network will display the publicly shared information on top of the messages thread when a stranger messages you, according to TechCrunch.

Only public information is shown

In reality, the new feature may not only be for complete strangers. The new update may also show details of Facebook friends whom you haven’t spoken to online before. Also the feature may become useless if the person has not set any information to “public.”

For example, if you get a message from someone who is not your friend, Facebook could inform you that he is a “Food Blogger” from “Seattle.” Such info could help you to remember that you met someone similar during a recent trip of yours, thus, helping you construct your chat.

As of now, the Facebook’s new feature is made available to iOS and Android users in the U.S., the U.K., France and India.

Facebook has plans for your professional life

TechCrunch dubs the new feature “chat ID” and says it follows Facebook’s release of Hello, an Android-only caller ID app that shows the caller’s info that’s available on Facebook or blocks the call if it’s from a known spammer.

Both updates (chat ID and caller ID) reflect the growing interest of the social network in connecting you to almost all people in your life and not only friends. This will surely add to your already existing friends’ connection list. More importantly, it will give Facebook a chance to impact your professional life as well, says the report. There is evidence that the younger generation is less influenced by LinkedIn, so the latest updates and the upcoming ones could be seen an attempt by Facebook to step in and fill that gap.

Of late, Facebook has been making consistent efforts to revamp its standalone Messenger app. Most recently, there were reports of Facebook testing a feature to allow sending money to friends via the Messenger mobile app. Also the social network has been testing a voice transcription feature, which will allow users to send voice clips. In addition, there have been reports of Messenger soon allowing users to play games in the app itself.